Tippy Toes

- by Carolyn Salas

2022 Tippy Toes
Sponsored by Lasaracina Sanders Family

water jet-cut and powder-coated aluminum

Location: NE quad of the Village Green near the train station

Carolyn Salas’ sculptures combine abstraction and narrative with a focus on the human form. Tippy Toes was inspired by lines from an Aldous Huxley poem: “That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage.”

Born in Hollywood, CA, Carolyn Salas lives and works in Brooklyn and upstate New York. Salas earned a BFA in sculpture from the College of Santa Fe and an MFA from Hunter College. Her work has been widely exhibited around the U.S. at the Berkshire Museum, the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Ever Gold Gallery (San Francisco), NADA Special Projects (Miami), and Mrs. Gallery (NYC). In 2021 Salas was named an Artist-in-Residence at Google and most recently was commissioned by the United States Tennis Association and the Armory Show to create a new outdoor sculpture for the US Open in 2022.

That sculpture, Tippy Toes, is the work currently on display on the Summit Village Green. Notice how the feet in the sculpture, poised on their toes, bring to mind the stilled moment before action (or, if you’re playing tennis, the moment just before the serve).

Salas studied abnormal psychology at the College of Santa Fe, while training to be a mold-maker. Her twin interests in Carl Jung’s ideas of the subconscious and the making of structural foam molds inspired her to create life-size, geometric, aluminum sculptures that incorporate elements of dream theory, language, mythology, and history. “I was reading a lot about signs and symbols,” she says, “and trying to think about how these archetypal images can be related—and translated—into artwork.”

Another influence on her work is ancient Greek art, particularly the image of the Caryatid, a sculpted female figure that functions as a column, “holding up the weight of the internal structures that no one thinks about or sees.” Without their stoicism and their strength, says Salas, everything around them would fall apart.

After sketching her works on paper, Salas models them with foam-core and collage. She then transfers these images into a computer program, using a 3D printer to cut the aluminum into their final forms, which are powder-coated with a matte white finish. Certain idiosyncrasies make their way into the finished art—if you look carefully, you will see small, ragged marks on the edges of each sculpture. It’s as if a drawing had jumped off the page and come to three-dimensional life.

“I hope that the work transcends and can be seen as timeless,” Salas says, “that anyone at any point in time can see it and relate.”